An online merchant may provide a large number of products for sale to customers over the Internet. Customers may access information regarding the available products through a World Wide Web (“Web”) site, or other type of site, provided by the online merchant. Such a Web site may include Web pages with product information needed by a customer to identify and purchase a particular product, such as a description of the product, an image of the product, product specifications, the price and availability of the product, and a mechanism for initiating a purchase of the product.
In order to assist customers in locating desired products, the Web site or other information service provided by an online merchant will typically include a mechanism for searching available products. The Web site or other information service might also provide various mechanisms for allowing customers to discover other products that might be of interest. For example, some online merchants will display a list of “Zeitgeist” products to customers. Zeitgeist products are those products that are considered to be popular at a particular point in time. For instance, Zeitgeist products might include those products having the highest number of sales during a particular period of time. Zeitgeist products might also be limited to a particular category, such as the top selling products in music or movie categories of a product catalog.
Zeitgeist products are typically part of a “head” of a product catalog that includes popular items. In contrast, the remainder of a product catalog may be referred to as a “long tail” of the product catalog, which consists of niche or less well-known products. Because the products in the long tail of a product catalog are typically not exposed to customers, it can be difficult for customers to discover products contained in this portion of a product catalog.
It is with respect to these and other considerations that the disclosure made herein is presented.